Smile! No One Cares How You Feel
by monscandal
Summary: Balancing the soul-sucking monotony of high school life with playing bass in the most non-conformist band in the history of music definitely isn't all it's cracked up to be.
1. Chapter 1

Monday mornings sucked just as much for Dylan as the next guy, but for whatever reason this one felt especially terrible. Probably it had something to do with being hungover as fuck and only getting about two and a half hours of sleep, but Dylan was completely unable to do anything but lie motionless in bed, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling while his alarm clock blared a staticky classical radio station and he tried to will his limbs to move.

Eventually and with a Herculean effort he managed to drag himself out of bed and over to the bathroom, Tchaikovsky still carrying on in the background. Goosebumps rose on his arms from the frigid winter air as he shuffled down the hall, bypassing his mother and ignoring her cheerful morning greeting. Once he was safely barricaded inside the bathroom, he surveyed his reflection in the mirror without much hope. His skin was pale and sallow and his eyes looked like bottomless pits with yesterday's makeup smudged all the way down his cheeks. His hair was sticking up in the particularly stubborn way it had that meant it wasn't going to start looking like it belonged on a human head anytime soon and on top of everything else the red dye in it was steadily fading to a non-threatening shade of pink that was most definitely not goth. He'd have to get Henrietta to dye it again sometime soon.

Dylan stared down the apparition in the mirror and thought that the most depressing thing about him was that he wasn't even too far-off from what Dylan looked like normally.

Heaving a sigh, Dylan switched on his flatiron and prepared for battle.

--- --- ---

Twenty minutes later Dylan had managed to finish getting ready without puking, which he considered a win. He shambled down the stairs, grabbing a backpack full of unfinished homework on his way out the door.

His dad gaped over his newspaper as Dylan walked out, apparently too baffled to even say goodbye. You'd think he'd have gotten used to it by now, thought Dylan, stepping onto the porch. He winced as a gust of wind hit him head-on, stinging his nose and eyes. He shoved his hands in the pockets of coat and peered impatiently down the snowy, tree-lined street. A blessedly short while after that Henrietta pulled up to the front of the house in her mom's beat-up car, Georgie nodding off in the front seat and Evan sitting in back.

They all looked just as bad as Dylan did, which almost made him feel a little better. He climbed in back and Evan nodded at him, Henrietta giving a distracted little wave from the front.

She peeled away from Dylan's house at breakneck speed, ignoring the fact that his mother was peering through the front window at them and looking rather scandalized. Sometimes Dylan felt kind of sorry for her, not getting some Justin Timberlake-wannabe conformist asshole for a son, but then he usually remembered that she was a bitch anyway.

For a while, no one spoke. Georgie had fallen completely asleep, Henrietta was concentrating on driving as aggressively as possible, and Evan was busy on staring out the window in a tortured manner.

All too soon Park County High was looming in the distance, shabby and oppressive-looking. They pulled into the parking lot just as the last bell rang. Dylan watched the stragglers shuffle inside, considered having to go in there himself for yet another day of crippling boredom interspersed with torment at the hands of those conformist boners he was forced to call his classmates, and realized that this was just not going to fucking happen today.

"I'm not going in there," he announced with as much determination as he could muster while still feeling half-dead from exhaustion.

"I'd rather drown in concrete," agreed Evan.

Henrietta, who had been getting ready to shake Georgie awake, glanced back at the two of them and nodded. She pulled out of the parking lot, performed some kind of highly illegal U-turn that involved almost rear-ending several cars, and started driving to Benny's without even having to ask.

Dylan pressed his pounding forehead to the cold glass of the window, hoping that it would soothe his raging hangover headache at least a little bit. He never had done well with nonmetaphorical pain. Evan shifted around in the seat next to him, his cane bumping against Dylan's knee in a way that could almost be considered sympathetic.

Soon Henrietta was pulling into Benny's and they were all piling out of the car, sort of dragging Georgie along with them until he was awake enough to walk on his own. They claimed their usual booth and ignored the way that fucking waitress was glaring at them. It had always been the same dried-up old bitch, ever since they were eight. Sometimes Evan would make elaborate comparisons likening her to Republicans or corporate America or Kanye West, but mostly Dylan just thought she was a cunt.

She brought them their customary six dollars worth of black coffee without bothering to ask, delivering it several minutes later than was probably acceptable and with palpable resentment in her face. The four of them performed a seamless group eye-roll and proceeded to ignore her completely, just like usual.

They nursed their cups in silence for a few minutes. Dylan warmed his fingers against the hot, chipped porcelain of the mug and felt his headache recede, just slightly.

Henrietta started telling some story about a show she went to on Friday and Dylan zoned out, looking past the dancing snowmen and nondenominational holiday greeting painted on the dirty windows of the diner. It had started snowing again, which would suck when they were back in Henrietta's car and had to worry about icy roads and all that shit on top of her questionable driving skills, but for now it just looked kind of pretty. There had been a heated group discussion the other day (or as heated as they ever got, which meant that Georgie stayed awake the whole time and Evan put down his coffee cup one or twice to make a gesture) on whether or not snow was conformist. Dylan had been high at the time and he couldn't really remember what they decided, but whatever. Cognizance was for assholes.

Dylan rested his chin on his hands and watched the white flakes spiral downward, thinking he could probably write a poem about them being God's dandruff or something when he didn't feel so terrible.

Henrietta finished her story with a sigh of annoyance, maybe at whatever it was that had happened to her and maybe because Dylan hadn't been paying attention. Georgie shifted groggily next to her, clutching his mug like his life depended on it. He was probably only just realizing that he wasn't in school.

"I wrote a poem last night," Evan announced from his place on the other side of Dylan, voice sounding a little rough and scratchy. Dylan settled back in the uncomfortable vinyl seat of the booth as Evan produced his battered black composition notebook and read them a poem in between sips of coffee. The meaning was indiscernible, which was pretty typical of Evan's poetry, but that typicality was strangely comforting. After he read the last line, something about being stabbed to death by a toothpick of pain, Henrietta nodded pensively.

"Deep," she said. Dylan and Georgie made noises of agreement, and they lapsed back into silence. Once they were all finished Henrietta declared that she needed a smoke badly, so they scrounged up whatever coins and crumpled dollar bills they had between them to pay for the coffee and trooped out to stand on the curb while Henrietta smoked.

Dylan lit one up too, hunching his shoulders against the cold. After a minute Evan sidled up to him, an unlit smoke dangling out the corner of his mouth. "Forgot my lighter," he announced, looking at Dylan expectantly. Dylan rolled his eyes but leaned in without complaint, letting Evan touch the tip of his cigarette to Dylan's and inhale until it flared to life. For a brief second, Evan's chapped lips and stuck-together eyelashes and cold-reddened nose were all Dylan could see, and then there was a puff of smoke and Evan stepped back. Dylan put that second out of his mind and glared pre-eminently at Henrietta, who always laughed like she knew something they didn't whenever they did this. She looked away innocently.

Occasionally other kids that had ditched for the day went walking by in twos and threes, talking and laughing and giving the four of them weird looks as they passed.

Dylan scowled at them and flicked his bangs out of his face impatiently, rubbing at his eyes to dispel the last remnants of sleep. He knew that compared to those other conformist douchebags they were pretty non-commutative, but the idea of carrying on a full conversation this early in the morning made his stomach turn. He glanced over at the three of them, and in the split second of eye contact they all shared he knew they were thinking the same thing.

After a few minutes Henrietta tossed the smoldering butt of her cigarette in the snow. Shortly after, Dylan and Evan followed suit. Georgie leaned over and surveyed the three tiny craters that they burned into the snow with interest. He was always trying to get them to let him smoke and drink when they did, and truthfully the thought didn't really bother Dylan or Evan, but Henrietta wouldn't allow it.

"It's too fucking cold," Dylan complained, mostly just for the sake of complaining. Evan nodded his assent and Henrietta suggested that they just go back to her house, because her mom was probably the only one who wouldn't care that they hadn't gone to school.

Dylan shrugged. Henrietta's house was pretty much where they always ended up, anyway. The four of them got back in the car and sped away. Henrietta cranked up the heat and Dylan reclined against the leather seat, letting it wash over him. Living his life in cold and darkness was fine in theory, but that shit became a different story when his face started going numb.

Dylan absently watched melted snowflakes run in rivulets down the window of the car until they pulled into Henrietta's driveway, jolting slightly as they bounced over the curb. Once Henrietta locked the car she herded them through the front door and into the house, from which her mother was blessedly absent.

They walked up the stairs and into Henrietta's room, blessedly dark and menacing in contrast with the cheeriness of the rest of her house. They all went to their usual spots without thinking about it; Georgie sprawled out on the bed, Evan and Dylan side-by-side on the floor, and Henrietta sitting cross-legged and holding another clove cigarette loosely between her fingers, paying no attention to the purple candles dripping wax into a saucer perilously close to the flame.

Georgie yawned hugely and dragged a pillow underneath his head, ignoring Henrietta's annoyed command to not fuck with them. She exhaled through her nose and picked up one of the many composition books lying around, idly thumbing through it with the hand that wasn't busy with her cigarette.

Dylan glanced over at Evan, who was staring at the ceiling in a way that reminded Dylan of himself from that morning. His hair was damp from the snow, curling at his temples and the nape of his neck even though these days he wasted a lot of time and effort trying to get it straight. As Dylan watched a water droplet that had been clinging to his cross earring rolled of and dripped down the side of his neck.

"Why don't you ever wear a fucking coat," Dylan asked abruptly, making sure there wasn't enough emotion in his voice for the question to be misconstrued as concern or anything stupid like that.

"Why do you always wear those fucking purple shoes," Evan retorted, not moving from his spot. Dylan glanced down at his shoes like he was just noticing they were there before shrugging and using one of them to kick at Evan's shin.

"Fuck off," Dylan replied without any real heat in his voice. Evan just made a snerking noise and scooted closer in order to sock Dylan halfheartedly in the shoulder, which was pretty much more energy than they usually spent on physical interaction in a whole week. From behind her notebook, Henrietta rolled her eyes in familiar exasperation.

* * *

**note: there is nothing about the band in this chapter i know D: but patience is a virtue! if anyone is even reading this madness, which is a big if**_._


	2. Chapter 2

Dylan felt sticky and claustrophobic, which were two of his least favorite things to be. He was damp with sweat and there was spilled beer on the crotch of his favorite pants and for the last half hour someone had been trying persistently to stick their hand down the front of his t-shirt. None of these things mattered, however, in light of what was going on a few feet away from his face.

Dylan's older brother Keith had flown in from New Jersey a few days ago, supposedly for a family visit. Dylan had his suspicions about this, however, mostly because he'd barely exchanged words with their parents at all so far and had in fact only stayed at the house long enough to raid the fridge and drag Dylan to his first basement show, insisting that if he didn't go he would be "totally missing the fuck out, dude."

Dylan had agreed, less because he actually thought that was true and more because he and Henrietta had been cultivating a taste for prescription drugs lately and he usually ended up scoring something or other when Keith was around. Which was how he'd ended up here in some girl's basement in North Park with no drugs in sight, vying for airspace with all of Keith's weird hipster friends.

He ended up just sort of standing around uncomfortably for a while, clutching his red plastic cup full of lukewarm beer and aggressively not speaking to anyone while Keith went around catching up with everybody. Just as he was getting ready to fake an anxiety attack or something to get Keith to drive him home, the band had come out.

It consisted of two stick-thin guys and a slightly more average-sized drummer, all with greasy dark hair at least partially obscuring their faces. The main guy spent a while gleefully attempting to get everyone in the audience to take their shirts off while the other two got their instruments set up, and then they started playing.

The sound could have easily been mistaken for a sudden terrorist attack if you weren't paying close attention. They were out of tune and obviously wasted and the frontman's voice wasn't all that fantastic, but Dylan couldn't tear his eyes away. He inched closer to the front of the basement where they were playing almost subconsciously, cutting his way through various clumps of dirty college kids until he was right in front of them and his eardrums were in immediate danger of rupturing. It wasn't like he'd never been to a show before, but this felt different. These guys completely sucked and half the people in the basement weren't even paying attention to them, but they were up there anyway like they had every right to be.

Dylan sort of felt like he had forgotten to breathe, only really coming back to himself when the bassist flipped him off at the end of their set and they were packing up their shit and walking away.

Not long after that Keith found him and they drove home, thankfully in relative silence. Dylan used the time to calm himself down. All he could think about was wanting to try that for himself.

He could still play bass, and Henrietta could still play keyboards, and Georgie--well, Georgie never really knew how to play drums, but he could learn. The prospect was the most exciting one he'd heard in a while. However, getting excited about shit was pretty much the least goth thing you could possibly do. Considering that presented another problem, namely how he was going to get the others to agree that this was a good idea. It would definitely take careful planning. Dylan barely remembered to say bye to Keith when he dropped him off at their place before speeding off to God-knew-where, more immediately preoccupied with holing himself up in his room to plot.

It was Friday afternoon when Dylan decided to bring it up with the rest of them. He was sprawled out on the damp concrete of their spot behind the school, listening to Bauhaus and not caring about the quantities of melted snow that were steadily soaking their way into his black jeans. Henrietta and Evan were arguing about something and Georgie was messing with the volume on their beat-up old radio. Dylan opened his mouth to interject and then decided it was too much effort, staying quiet and watching a plastic bag and a styrofoam cup chase each other across the asphalt as the wind picked up. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and shivered, ignoring the sharp look Evan gave him and holding up a hand to ward off his inevitable nagging about how Dylan was going to catch pneumonia and totally die or something.

"All I'm saying is," said Henrietta, pausing to take a drag of her cigarette from its thin black holder. "There's pretty much no point in even listening to music anymore because all of it eventually becomes mainstream conformist bullshit."

Dylan visibly perked up as she spoke. He couldn't possibly have hoped for a better opening.

"Totally," he agreed before Evan could answer her. "It's like, the only way you know a band won't sell out is if you're fucking in it yourself."

Henrietta tilted her head pensively. "You know," she said. "That's actually not a bad idea."

Georgie glanced over at them. "We did totally get robbed at that talent show," he remarked.

Dylan shrugged, trying to act like it didn't make much of a difference to him either way.

"But it would be so much _work_," Evan protested, yawning.

Dylan remained unfazed. "Yeah," he conceded. "But I remember you looked kinda cool up there singing."

Evan considered this for a moment. "Maybe we should do it," he said. "I mean, we don't want to turn into lazy conformist assholes or anything."

Dylan nodded soberly. Georgie rolled his eyes.

"I probably still have all my old keyboards and shit," Henrietta said thoughtfully. Dylan knew his bass was gathering dust in a closet somewhere, because his parents enjoyed reminding him of this fact sometimes when they were loudly listing off all the reasons he was a disappointment. That just left Georgie. Dylan remembered back when they had done the talent show that Georgie didn't really know how to play drums at all and had just sort of banged on them in a vague rhythm whenever he thought the song needed some extra punch because Henrietta said drum machines were for conformists.

Noticing the eyes on him, Georgie shrugged defensively. "I might know someone who can teach me drums. Maybe." A strange expression crossed his face for a second, which was weird because Georgie usually didn't have much in the way of facial expressions besides apathetic or sleeping.

"Who?" Henrietta demanded. "You don't know anyone except us." Georgie shrugged again and turned back to the radio, making it obvious that he wasn't going to say another word on the subject.

"What should our name be?" Dylan said hastily, in an attempt to distract Henrietta. After a pause for consideration, Evan was the first to speak up.

"Carnage Visors," he offered. Henrietta looked like she was considering it, but Georgie frowned and shook his head.

"Referencing another band in the name of yours is so overdone."

Evan made a noise that would have been considered a huff if it had come from anyone else, but didn't protest.

"Vascular Dementia," Henrietta suggested.

Dylan shook his head. "Too metal. A mental disease would be cool, though."

"Borderline intellectual functioning. Frotteurism. Manic episodes," Georgie recited in a monotone. Dylan dimly remembered him spending a week inside memorizing the Wikipedia article on metal disorders sometime last summer, much to the chagrin of his parents.

"I like the last one," said Dylan thoughtfully. "The Manic Episodes."

"The Manic Episodes," repeated Evan, and then Henrietta, like it was a mantra. Dylan nodded once, decisively, and then reached over to steal the cigarette that was hanging out the side of Evan's mouth.

"We should have a practice," he said, taking a slow, victorious drag. "Tomorrow."

"We can do it in my garage," said Henrietta. Dylan hid his triumphant expression behind an exhaled cloud of smoke before carefully sticking the end of the cigarette back in Evan's mouth, which was open in half-hearted protest.

That night while Dylan's parents were asleep so they couldn't ask stupid questions, he braved the dusty clutter of the hall closet in order to find his bass.

After sneezing three times and stubbing his toe on some kind of wooden block, because of course out of all the parents in the world his were the ones who would develop enough emotional attachment to a tree stump to keep it in the house, he returned to his room with the bass. Although the case was covered in dust, inside it looked just the same as it had when he was eight.

Deciding that he'd make sure everything was in working order tomorrow, Dylan settled down with his nightly cup of coffee and tried not to think about tomorrow's practice too much, because looking forward to things was way un-goth.

Dylan and Georgie arrived in Henrietta's garage at more or less the same time Saturday afternoon to find everything prepared, due to the fact that Henrietta had bullied her mom into setting up her old keyboards and a drum set that apparently belonged to her mom's ex-boyfriend.

Georgie showed up with drumsticks, and when Dylan asked where he got them Georgie gave him a mutinous look. "Forgot," he said, and that was the end of that.

After they had all stood around for a few minutes fiddling with their respective instruments and vaguely complaining about how cold Henrietta's garage was, Evan showed up and Dylan figured they should probably get down to business. Subsequently, he realized that he didn't actually have any idea what you actually had to do to practice with your band if you didn't know any songs or have any lyrics.

Evan, who had apparently been having the same thoughts, glanced questioningly over at Dylan.

Henrietta was miles ahead of them, as usual. Setting aside her cigarette holder and narrowing her eyes in concentration, she hit a couple buttons on her keyboard and started playing a simple, vaguely-familiar sounding tune slow enough for Georgie to join in with a basic drum beat. Dylan shrugged and started picking out a bass line, trying to match it at least vaguely with what Henrietta was doing. Evan, who had brought his notebook with him, flipped it open to a random page and started singing, presumably using the words to one of the poems he found there. Dylan could hardly hear him over Georgie's drumming, but from what he could tell he was at least trying to match his voice to whatever Henrietta was doing.

Dylan discovered after a few attempts that he could flip his hair and keep playing at the same time, and it was impossible to stop the invigorated smile from spreading across his face. Thankfully, he was able to wipe it off pretty quickly and everyone else was too preoccupied to notice.

They continued in this vein for a while, with Henrietta occasionally making adjustments to what she was playing in accordance with some invisible indicator that only she could see.

After he had mastered the hair-flip and needed something else to do, Dylan adopted a kind of Charlie-Brown reminiscent dance in which he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and shuffled from foot to foot while he played. As he was working out the kinks of this, Georgie was starting to drum slower and slower until they were all playing at roughly the speed of a funeral march.

Finally he broke off altogether, the rest of them kind of crashing to a halt at different times once they noticed that he had stopped playing.

"My wrists hurt," he announced when Evan sent him a quizzical look, dangling one of them limply in front of himself.

Dylan peered anxiously at the three of them, trying to mask his worry and wondering what he would do if they decided this whole thing was boring or conformist or too hard.

However, as he looked around he noticed that Georgie was massaging his wrist like he wanted to start up again as soon as possible, Henrietta was making more adjustments to her keyboard, and Evan was flipping through the notebook on his knee as though he was looking for more poems to use as makeshift lyrics. Relieved, Dylan flicked his hair out of his eyes and set his bass down carefully, making his way over to where Evan was sitting with his notebook.

Evan glanced up and then beckoned Dylan closer before nodding down at the book, open to a page that featured a highly graphic narrative of their Spanish teacher's bloody death complete with correct conjugations of the verbs voy and estar.

"Do you think this would work to sing?" he asked, squinting down at it.

Dylan rested his chin on Evan's shoulder as he scanned a couple paragraphs before straightening up and shaking his head.

"Too metal," he repeated. "Plus I have class with you and your Spanish accent sucks ass. I liked that thing about dead trees you did a couple weeks ago."

Evan rolled his eyes but seemed placated by the compliment. On the other side of the room, Georgie looked doubtfully down at his own hands.

"We're pretty terrible," he remarked.

"We're definitely going to have to practice more," Henrietta said decisively. "And you should probably try some wrist-strengthening exercises."

"What can you even do to make your wrists stronger?" Georgie demanded. Dylan and Evan exchanged glances and snickered, and Georgie glared over at them.

"Just saying," said Evan. "If you didn't try to act all asexual and mysterious, we wouldn't be having this problem."

"I'm _fourteen_," said Georgie.

"Your hormonal prime," Dylan supplied helpfully, earning himself a look of death from Henrietta.

"Actually I feel a lot better now," said Georgie loudly. "We should probably get back to it."

This time Dylan lead them off, starting with a bass line that he vaguely remembered from some song or other that was thoroughly reinvented when paired with Georgie's rather unorthodox drumming. Evan waited a couple beats and then starting in singing, which for him basically just meant talking loudly in a slightly more musical way than normal. His voice was low and rough from smoking, and Dylan wouldn't admit it if anyone asked, but he sort of liked it.

He was so busy trying to perfect his Charlie Brown bass dance that it took a few seconds for him to realize that Evan was singing the thing about the trees.

* * *

sorry for the wait if you're following this! i was mentally blocked/generally lazy/ect ect ect.


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday dawned as gray and freezing as any other day that week had been, and that afternoon the four of them assembled in Henrietta's room to write some songs. Everyone's poetry notebooks were handed to Georgie, who took on the responsibility of copying out the best parts of all their different poems and stringing them painstakingly into something that sort of resembled lyrics. Meanwhile Henrietta sat cross-legged in front of her keyboard picking out different tunes and then scribbling notes that no one but her would be able to read onto a hastily drawn musical staff, occasionally switching the settings of the keyboard from organ to harpsichord to what sounded like a bunch of people humming.

Evan had taken to looking over Georgie's shoulder at the song he was cobbling together, occasionally pointing out what should go where and when something sounded weird, but mostly just sort of mumbling the lyrics under his breath to some made-up tune to see if they fit. Dylan, who couldn't sing or write music to save his life, was left with nothing more to do than drink lukewarm coffee from one of Henrietta's mom's Garfield mugs and absently press his thumb into a bruise on the side of his wrist until the dull ache became too much to handle. Just as he was about to finish the last of the coffee and possibly throw the annoyingly bright orange mug out the window, Evan climbed over Georgie to get next to Dylan, who groaned. He knew what was coming next all too well.

"Let me get some of that," Evan demanded.

Dylan rolled his eyes pronouncedly. "Every fucking time," he growled before sparing the dregs of the cup one last wistful look and grudgingly handing it over.

Evan downed the rest of the coffee smugly and then handed back the mug with a shit-eating grin. From behind them, Georgie snickered. Dylan turned around to give him the finger and then aimed it at Evan too, for good measure. "I am going to rip out that earring and shove it down your throat."

Before Dylan had a chance to make good on his threat, Georgie held up a heavily scribbled-on piece of notebook paper. "I think I'm done. With one, at least."

He handed the paper to Evan, who scanned it quickly before looking up and nodding. "Should we start, then?"

Dylan nodded, trying not to look too eager. While it was true that they were still completely awful, he'd found lately that practicing was almost the only thing he was interested in doing anymore, whether it was by himself or with the others. His bass-dance was making leaps and bounds.

The four of them gathered up their stuff and trooped down to Henrietta's garage. Once there, they were greeted by a blast of frigid winter air. Georgie shivered and pulled his jacket tighter around him, and Evan started to complain loudly almost as soon as he stepped into the garage. Henrietta's mom had somehow managed to mess up the automatic door since their last practice, which meant that they would have to suffer through the cold if they wanted to practice at all. The only advantage to this that Dylan could see was that this way they were louder and could therefore piss off as many of Henrietta's neighbors as possible, but when pitted against the drawback of being completely freezing while they did it, Dylan knew which one he would pick.

They started up in much the same way that they had last time, one at a time until they were all playing in unison. Sort of. Georgie's drumming might have been slightly less haphazard than last time and Evan actually had something concrete to sing, which were improvements, if not by much.

The first song was just winding down and they were going for the big finish, which was pretty much exactly the same as the rest of the song except that everything was louder, when that complete boner Stan Marsh and his friend Kenny came walking by. They did a simultaneous double take when they saw what was going on in Henrietta's garage and then stopped on the sidewalk to watch the conclusion of the song. Dylan glanced around nervously, but no one really seemed like they minded all that much.

Evan kept on doing his best to adapt the lyrics to what the rest of them were playing, reaching a part of the song that concerned emotional disembowelment and singing it with particular vehemence while glaring at Stan all the while. Dylan flicked his hair out of his eyes and glared too, for backup. Georgie was concentrating too hard on his drums to notice anything weird going on, and Henrietta just didn't look like she particularly cared.

After the song finally crashed to its rather ungainly conclusion, Kenny applauded them politely.

"Wow," he said cheerfully afterwards. "You guys are really terrible, huh?"

"Eat it," said Henrietta, but there wasn't any real heat in her voice. They did kind of suck. Dylan was more immediately concerned with the way Evan was looking at Stan all wounded and long-sufferingly. It always had taken him a long time to recover from emotional betrayal. Dylan glared at Stan some more in a way that was, if not protective, then something close to it.

"I'd love to, call me," grinned Kenny before motioning to Stan and then starting to walk away. But Stan tugged on the sleeve of his beat-up orange jacket to get him to stay, standing there with a considering expression on his face.

"Wendy wants a band for her party," he said thoughtfully.

Kenny snorted. "And you pick these guys? Seriously?"

"We're right here, asshole," Georgie intoned darkly, apparently having just tuned into the conversation.

Stan shrugged. "It's not like there are any other bands around here. Plus she told me to find one, so it's not like she'd find out about it until the actual party." He turned to them. "So how about it? I know you guys turn into bats at night or whatever, but there'll be free beer."

Dylan frowned angrily and said "Hell, no" at the same time that Georgie asked "When is it?"

"We'll get back to you," Henrietta interjected, waving them away. Shrugging, Stan and Kenny continued walking down the street. Georgie waited until they were out of earshot before turning on Dylan, setting down his drumsticks and glaring.

"Are you insane? It'd be our first gig!"

"But it's for Stan's girlfriend, and she's a conformist bitch, and playing at her party would make us conformist bitches too by default," Dylan argued. It was true there were other reasons not to play at Wendy's party, but that was definitely one of the most important ones.

"How do you figure?" Georgie retorted. "We could enlighten them all as to what good music actually sounds like. Show them how it's done, you know."

Dylan couldn't really find a way to argue with that besides "I don't want to deal with Evan's bitchassness when we have to play at a party for Stan the Traitor's girlfriend," so he just settled for a final "Whatever, I don't want to," and then lapsing into resentful silence.

Because it would be him to deal with the bitchassness, that was for sure. Ever since they were kids and Stan had joined and then deserted them so quickly, it was Dylan who sat around with Evan at three in the morning, drinking coffee to stay awake and listening as Evan alternated between chain-smoking and ranting about how it wasn't like he even liked that kid anyway, whatever, seriously. The whole thing filled Dylan with a sort of inarticulate rage that made him incapable of doing anything if he thought about it for too long. He'd considered the notion that it could possibly be some kind of jealously that he was feeling, and then promptly filed that particular thought away as way too confusing to dwell on.

"I think we should do it," Evan piped up unexpectedly.

Dylan looked at him in disbelief for a few seconds. If there was one person he'd expected to be on his side in all this, it was Evan. "Whatever," he said finally. "If you guys want. I give up."

"Think of it as a warm-up," Henrietta told Dylan soothingly.

Dylan just sighed. Now that he was resigned to their fate of selling out before they'd even played their first gig it was actually kind of exciting, not that he would ever admit it. But there were still a lot of practical things to consider. "You realize we don't even know when the party is and that this means we're going to have to somehow come up with an entire setlist before it happens?"

Henrietta paled, which was a considerable feat what with all the foundation she had on. "I didn't think about that."

Dylan shrugged. "Guess we'd better get to it, then," he said. "From the top."

That night as Dylan was getting ready for his pre-bed cigarette, he heard his cell phone buzzing from the nightstand next to his bed. He considered just letting it ring, but it was too late for it to be anyone except for, well. The only person who ever called him after midnight. Padding across the carpet to the nightstand, Dylan picked up the phone. Sure enough, it was Evan's name on the display. Dylan couldn't help but smirk to himself as he looked at the caller ID photo, a shot of Evan glaring sleepily at the camera with his hair all messed up over a cup of coffee from one of their early-morning Benny's runs.

He flicked open the phone to answer it, taking a drag of his cigarette and exhaling out of his open bedroom window before mumbling "Whaddyou want" into the phone.

There was a sound that Dylan couldn't identify on the other end and then Evan's voice was in his ear, low as usual and sounding just as tired as Dylan. "Did I wake you up?"

Dylan yawned. "Almost. What's up?" There was a pause on the other end of the line. Dylan frowned, feeling slightly more awake. Evan never beat around the bush unless he was writing poetry or something was wrong. "Spit it out," he prompted.

"Are you mad about today?" Evan asked suddenly, the words coming out slightly rushed. "Like, about playing at Stan's girlfriend's party. Because I can tell Georgie and Henrietta that we can't do it if, like. You know."

Dylan could feel the ridiculous grin that was spreading across his features, but he was unable to do anything to suppress it.

"Evan," he said seriously, cradling the phone between his neck and shoulder as he exhaled another cloud of smoke. "Did you seriously call me up at two in the morning so that we could _talk about our feelings_."

Evan made a scoffing noise. "Whatever. Next time, see if I care."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Dylan said. "Call me again tomorrow and we can discuss our cycles."

There was a pause, and then an aggravated intake of breath. "I'm hanging up now, asshole."

"No, wait, wait," Dylan said, trying to sound apologetic. Evan hadn't had to do that for him, really. Not to mention he would totally give Dylan hell about it the next day if he didn't say he was sorry.

Another pause, and then Evan's distinctly annoyed-sounding voice going, "What."

"I'm not mad," Dylan said, allowing his voice to soften. "I thought you would be mad."

"Well, I'm not," said Evan. To Dylan's relief, he sounded at least a little bit less angry. "Who gives a shit about Stan's girlfriend, anyway?"

"No one will, after they hear our awesome band and realize the error of their douchey conformist ways," Dylan said back confidently.

Evan let out a grudging chuckle. "Yeah, right. Look, I have to go."

"Yeah," said Dylan. "Thanks for calling and shit."

Evan coughed, but Dylan could tell he was just covering up another laugh. "Shut up. Bye."

"See you," said Dylan even though Evan had already hung up the phone. He finished up his cigarette and closed the window, blowing out the various candles that lit up his room and climbing into bed. It was stupid and made no sense, but when Dylan thought about the conversation he'd just had with Evan he couldn't help but grin some more into his pillow.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning before school Henrietta found Stan and his friends and told them that they would play at Wendy's party. She was alone-Georgie was asleep in the back seat of her car, Evan didn't want to go near Stan, and Dylan stayed behind with him for moral support. The two of them shivered on the asphalt and glared at Stan from a safe distance.

"That guy is such an ass," Dylan said, and Evan grunted his agreement. They both redoubled the intensity of their glares. Stan didn't even look awed by their formidable rage or anything, which was infuriating.

The bell rang while Henrietta was still talking, and she shrugged and turned away. Kenny waved at her cheerfully before he went to follow Stan, and Dylan could tell from several yards away that she was rolling her eyes.

She made her way back over to Dylan and Evan at a leisurely pace, unconcerned with the bell or the flow of student traffic around her. "The party is in three weeks. Stan says we'll only have to play for, like, an hour or something because after that Wendy will be too drunk to notice if he just puts in CDs."

"So we need to come up with an hour's worth of songs?" Dylan asked.

Henrietta nodded. "I'm thinking covers. Lots of covers."

Dylan resisted the urge to groan. Evan was getting a familiar look in his eyes. A plotting look. And with that one look Dylan could tell that he was formulating a list in his head of the exact songs he wanted to cover and once that list was complete he absolutely wouldn't budge from it. Which would be fine, usually. Dylan had grown used to going along with Evan's plans with minimal protest. The only problem was that Henrietta had the exact same look.

"I'll go get Georgie," he volunteered, mostly just so that he could escape before he got sucked into anything.

Dylan thought about it all day long. He was so preoccupied that he didn't even notice his Statistics teacher yelling at him until she was halfway through lecturing him about paying attention and doing his work.

Anyone who even took the time to assume anything about Goth kids in general thought that they all listened to the exact same bands. To an extent it was even true. Similar music taste was half the requirements for becoming a non-conformist, after all. Coupled with matching pessimistic worldviews, it was even what had brought the four of them together in the first place.

But even counting all of that, they were still different people with different ideas, ideas that would make an argument over which songs they should cover imminent. Dylan thought that arguing about things was boring and pointless at the best of times, but now that the fate of his band's first show hung in the balance they were especially uncool.

Things became even more worrying at lunch. They were sitting in their customary spot behind the school when Georgie informed everyone that he'd actually been working on lyrics for a lot more songs than they thought they'd had before, meaning that there was only space for one or two covers after all. Dylan braced himself.

"It has to be The Cure," Evan announced immediately, to no one's surprise. "There's literally no other band it could possibly be."

"What about Skinny Puppy?" Henrietta protested, taking a sip of lukewarm coffee from Dylan's Thermos and narrowing her eyes at Evan.

"I wanna cover The Gothic Archies," Georgie announced, looking up from where he'd been messing with the radio. Neither Henrietta nor Evan even bothered to acknowledge that, much to his dismay.

Dylan, who wouldn't have minded covering The Smiths but knew that he'd get shot down immediately in the face of Henrietta and Evan's superior obsessions, stayed quiet and waited until the three of them got tired of arguing and settled on Bauhaus. It took less time than he'd thought it would and no one got _really_ angry, which Dylan considered a triumph.

Then Georgie said, "so which song will it be?"

Dylan sighed loudly and stretched out on the cold asphalt, using his jacket for a pillow. He gazed up at the sky, opaque and gray with no sun forthcoming. After about five minutes of listening vaguely to Henrietta exonerating the merit of Kick in the Eye while Georgie insisted that it had to be Muscle in Plastic and Evan told them they were both crazy, Dylan was so zoned out that he barely noticed Evan reaching down to tug on one of the still-faded red parts of his hair. "Dylan, back me up," he said.

Dylan shrugged idly, exhaling in an attempt to remain Zen about this whole thing. It was so cold his breath was visible, a frozen white cloud against the dull sky. "Evan is right and you guys are wrong," he said in a bored monotone, because he knew that if he didn't Evan would bother him about it in his own passive-aggressive way for far longer than any normal person would.

Henrietta and Georgie let out identical groans and Dylan heard Evan say, "see? I told you," before he tuned out again. Evan's hand lingered even though he'd stopped pulling, absently petting Dylan's dye-stiff hair like he was some kind of dog or something.

"Woof," Dylan said sarcastically, but he didn't bother to twist away. Instead he closed his eyes as Georgie turned their radio to whatever weird band he was into that week in the hopes of enticing Evan and Henrietta into wanting to cover them while the two of them ignored the music in favor of trying to pick a song, getting lazier and lazier until they were finally just quoting lyrics back and forth at each other until the bell rang.

The next few weeks ran together in a blur of school and practice. But mostly practice. The four of them had taken to skipping class even more often than they usually did in favor of hiding out in Henrietta's garage and perfecting the songs that Georgie and Henrietta wrote. By the time Monday of the third week rolled around, Evan's voice was hoarse and Dylan's fingers were calloused and Henrietta had lost three pounds from being so stressed out she couldn't even stress-eat.

The only one who didn't seem worried at all was Georgie. Sometimes he would skip practices altogether or just mysteriously disappear for hours at a time, always looking far more cheerful than he would usually consider acceptable the next time he showed up.

Henrietta was going crazy with suspicion. With her, of course, all this meant was that from time to time she made remarks about Georgie not being around, but Dylan and Evan both knew her well enough to recognize the signs. It took all of their combined efforts to stop her from following Georgie the next time he disappeared.

The two of them figured that whatever it was he was getting up to they might as well just leave him to it, especially since he was getting much better at playing drums and also turning out songs like there was no tomorrow.

Most of them were Evan's poetry with a fair amount of Henrietta and Dylan thrown in, but every now and then Dylan noticed a phrase or two he didn't recognize that sounded like it might have come from Georgie, who never volunteered to read anything when the others were sharing their poetry. In fact, none of them were really sure whether or not he wrote any at all. Dylan figured this must be his way of getting it out there without actually having to admit to anything.

Henrietta was satisfied with no such explanation. It was Monday night when she finally broke down and asked Georgie where he'd been.

She, Dylan, and Evan were sitting in her room after practice just like they normally did, each complaining in turn about the detentions they'd been given that day in homeroom for missing so much class when Georgie, who hadn't shown up, walked through the door and took his usual place on the bed, grabbing one of Henrietta's pillows and propping his chin on it.

"Hey," he said, like nothing weird was going on at all.

Dylan cut Henrietta a look, but she pretended not to notice. "You didn't come to practice," she said. Outwardly she seemed as calm as ever, but Dylan could tell by the way she exhaled a thin stream of smoke from her clove cigarette like a dragon that she was mad. He nudged Evan warningly, and Evan nudged him back.

Georgie just shrugged. "Got busy," he said. Dylan noticed that his lipstick was gone, and fervently hoped that Henrietta wouldn't.

She stubbed out her cigarette and folded her arms. "You know Wendy's party is in six days, right?"

Georgie glared at her defensively. "I do all the shit you ask me to, so what's the problem?"

Henrietta lit another cigarette and pointedly refused to look at him. "Whatever."

Dylan and Evan watched the exchange silently. As generally angry with life as the four of them were, it was pretty rare for them to bother arguing with each other, let alone have real fights. The stress must have been getting to everyone.

Dylan wondered miserably if this meant the band was breaking up before they could even play a show. He supposed it was true that Georgie didn't have to tell them where he was every second of every day, but he also knew that Henrietta was only concerned and also probably angry that Georgie wouldn't tell her where he'd been even though she was the only one who ever really remembered that he was still a freshman and tried at least a little bit to keep him out of trouble.

Dylan was getting tired just thinking about it. Fights were exhausting, even if you weren't participating in them. Maybe even especially then. He nudged Evan again, this time for a drag of his cigarette, and Evan passed it silently.

Georgie and Henrietta were locked in a staring match the likes of which Dylan hadn't seen since Evan's parents got divorced. Finally, Georgie broke his gaze and climbed off the bed with a muttered, "whatever," and left, taking care to slam the door on his way out.

"Puberty," Evan told Henrietta in a vaguely consoling way. She rolled her eyes, but took some coffee when Dylan passed it to her.

When he left Henrietta's house that night, Dylan was concerned. They all knew how strong-minded Henrietta could be, and being youngest had made Georgie pretty stubborn himself. He could easily see them refusing to work together on the band if they didn't make up soon. And that would be disastrous not only because they wouldn't get to play the party, but because they were the ones who wrote all the songs in the first place. Dylan had a feeling that if songwriting duty was left to him and Evan, the Manic Episodes would suck even harder than they did already.

Dylan worried all throughout school on Tuesday before he realized at lunch that he shouldn't have wasted his time. Georgie was as silent as usual and Henrietta was just as bored-looking, but when he approached their lunch spot they were sitting there next to each other and staring intently down at the radio like they hadn't fought at all.

This, of course, lead Dylan to believe that Georgie had come back to Henrietta's house after he and Evan had left and they'd had some kind of heart-to-heart. He vaguely considered making fun of them for it, but he figured that he probably shouldn't risk it. Besides, it appeared that the band was back on, and that was currently the important thing.

"Practice at your house tonight?" Evan asked Henrietta, apparently wondering the same thing as Dylan.

"Obviously," she said. "There's only five more days left and we still sound like dog shit."

Dylan tried not to look too relieved. They practiced so hard for the next four days that he forgot to re-dye his hair.


	5. Chapter 5

Dylan exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and watched Henrietta curse extensively as she tried to shove the last of her keyboard stuff in the trunk of her mom's boyfriend's van along with all their amps and Dylan's bass. Wendy had a drum set at her house, for whatever reason, so they didn't have to bring theirs along. Which was good, because apparently it wouldn't have fit.

"You nervous?" he asked Georgie, who was standing next to him in a transparent attempt to pirate body heat and secondhand smoke.

Georgie rolled his eyes, _as if_, but his eyeliner was applied much more carefully than usual and his drumsticks were clutched tight in his fist. "Are you?"

Dylan just shrugged. To be honest he was pretty much terrified, but Goth kids didn't get to be terrified until they were facing down Death himself. And probably not even then.

Henrietta finally triumphed, slamming the trunk shut with a bang that roused Evan from where he'd been standing off to the side going over lyrics for the millionth time. "Should we go?"

There's still a couple hours until the party starts, but Stan had told them to show up early so he'd be sure they wouldn't pussy out or something, and before Dylan knew it he was crammed in the back of the van with Henrietta's keyboard on one side of him and Georgie on the other and his bass resting carefully on his lap.

Henrietta appeared to be taking out her nerves on the rapidly darkening road in front of them. She defied speed limits and the laws of physics while Evan smoked in the front seat, window cracked even though it was fucking freezing out.

Georgie was drumming on his own kneecaps, occasionally using one of Dylan's as a cymbal or something. He really had gotten a lot better. Henrietta was good to begin with and Evan's voice at least went with what they were doing, and Dylan had been practicing like a madman pretty much for the past ever. They could totally make it through this.

A few minutes later they were pulling up to Wendy's driveway. There were only a couple other cars parked around, so no one saw them unloading their shit and trooping up to knock on the door of Wendy's house. Which was probably for the best, really.

Wendy answered the door after a few minutes and some scuffling sounds, red plastic cup in hand. She was pretty obviously buzzed already, which was probably the only reason she didn't just shut the door in their faces.

"What're you guys doing here?" she asked as Stan came up to stand behind her.

"They're the band," he said. "You wanted me to get a band, remember?"

"The Manic Episodes," Georgie supplied helpfully.

Wendy gave them a long look before shrugging and waving them inside. "Basement's over to the right and down those stairs. You can set up your stuff, just start playing at nine or ten or something. There's beer down there, too."

The four of them nodded and shuffled as a unit over to the stairs that led down to the basement. On the way there they passed the kitchen, where some more of Stan and Wendy's douchebag friends were helping to set things up.

Kenny waved at them cheerfully from by the fridge, where he was clutching his surly French boyfriend's sleeve like he was liable to make a break for it at any moment. "Hey!" he said, giving the sleeve a warning tug as the guy attempted to shuffle off without being noticed. "Didn't think you guys would actually show up."

"Figured we could teach you guys a thing or two," Henrietta said airily, examining her fingernails. If Dylan hadn't been subject to her driving on the way over, he might even have bought it.

Kenny just shrugged and grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose from the freezer, waving it at Surly French Boyfriend in a vaguely enticing manner.

"Those guys are a trip," Dylan thought he heard him say as they continued on, down to the basement. No one was down there except for them and a mini-fridge full of Bud Light.

They made short work of the equipment, tracking down the drum set and finding the wall with the most electrical sockets in it to set up against. After that, there wasn't much else to do besides drink, and while absinthe would have been preferable Bud Light would do in a pinch.

"Just to take the edge off," Evan said as he cracked open his first one. Dylan nodded, and they raised their cans in a toast.

An hour later, when people finally started coming down, Dylan was sort of drunk. Maybe more than sort of. From a quick inventory of the others, he figured they were probably in about the same boat that he was. Which was distressing, because Wendy Testaburger's stupid normal friends were already starting to look at them like, _what are these creepy Goth kids doing here drinking all of our faggy conformist Nazi beer_? And that sucked. Still, it took a lot to rattle the kids of South Park, and the more people who filtered in, the less attention was directed at them.

Dylan fumbled for his cellphone, checked the display, and saw that it was already 9:45.

"We should start," he said, getting to his feet, and managing to trip in the process so that he fell heavily against Evan's side, laughing all the while. "Whoah," said Evan, and he felt solid and the buttons of his coat dug into Dylan's arm until he could right himself again. Evan gave him a little push in the direction of his bass, which had been laying on a stool, and Dylan stumbled a little as he went. It was possible he was definitely more than sort of drunk.

"Hey," said Evan into their shitty mic, ignoring a squeal of feedback. His voice sounded apathetic even though he was slurring. A couple people turned to listen but most of them were too busy drinking and fighting and gossiping to pay attention. "We're the Manic Episodes, or whatever."

Dylan smiled fondly down at his bass. This whole thing seemed a lot less scary now. He couldn't even remember why he'd been so freaked out, really.

Before he could attempt to force his brain to think anymore, Georgie counted them in. They started with a song that didn't actually have a name yet but was supposed to be an extended metaphor that compared love to getting stabbed repeatedly in the neck. They'd practiced it much slower than they were playing it now, and Dylan had to concentrate hard to keep up.

By the time they hit the halfway mark and he got to take a break for Henrietta's keyboard solo Dylan was already sweating, wiping off his forehead and looking out at the sea of faces surrounding them. It wasn't like a spectacular amount of people were there, but from the middle of all of them it seemed like a lot. More of them were paying attention now, too, even if it was just to glare and complain about the noise.

The bass line started up again and Dylan sidled over to where Evan was leveling their audience with a dead-eyed stare as he talked. Sang. Whatever he was doing up there. It was kind of hard to tell. Evan was always that way when he was drunk, though, silent and stiff and the complete opposite of Dylan's uninhibited exhuberance. Maybe it was just the alcohol talking, but Dylan felt like Evan definitely needed to spice up his performance a little.

So he flicked his hair out of his eyes enthusiastically and shuffled a few quick steps of his bass dance as he played, hoping Evan would get the hint. He didn't, and not for the next song either, or the song after that. They were running on a limited amount of material, and Dylan decided his game would be to get Evan to loosen the fuck up before their set was over. You couldn't have a robot for a frontman and succeed in the world. Unless you were the Rock-Afire Explosion. But that was different.

During Atrophy of the Mind and Soul, at the part where Evan sang about drowning in a pit of emotion, Dylan stumbled into him again. Except for this time it was totally on purpose and he stayed put for as long as he could, leaning against Evan as he played. Evan still had his fucking coat on even though it was like a hundred degrees in the basement.

Dylan kind of expected Evan to push him away or something but he let him stay there until halfway through I Hate Chemistry Honors, even though it couldn't have been comfortable.

Heart Philanderer didn't have that many words in it, so Dylan risked coming up behind him and resting his chin on his shoulder while he played the way he did sometimes when Evan wanted to show him something. Two girls whooped drunkenly from the back of the room, and Dylan thought he could detect a slight lift to Evan's voice. Feeling victorious, he shoved off just as the song ended and they started on their cover of Bauhaus' Hair of the Dog.

And then it was time for their last song, Vampire Afternoon. It was pretty cool, and for the first half it was all Dylan could do to try and keep in time with Georgie and Henrietta, but he got back up to Evan during the spoken-word break about being slowly and painfully incinerated by the reflection of sunlight off of winter snow. It was supposed to end with Evan screaming into the mic out of nowhere, but now he was gradually building up to it instead, words coming fast and intense like a crazy person.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Dylan leaned forward and up and bit him on the side of the neck, probably kinda hard, salt on his skin mixing with the lingering traces of booze in Dylan's mouth. Instead of screaming like he was supposed to, Evan let out a choked-off noise that sounded way more convincing as someone's dying breath than the scream had. Cool.

Dylan detached himself with a flourish and grinned as the song ended with one last note. A couple people applauded disinterestedly, a couple more of them booed, and pretty soon someone put some fucking Britney Spears-type garbage on the stereo and everyone started dancing around. Dylan rolled his eyes and flipped off the room at large for the sake of appearances, even though inside he may have been jumping for joy a little, Britney Spears or no.

He bent down to unplug his bass, and when he straightened up again there was a faggy vampire kid standing in front of them out of nowhere.

"You guys are awesome," he said, and was that seriously a liquid eyeliner heart at the corner of his eye or was Dylan having a fever dream. "Way subversive."

"Thanks," said Evan, nudging Dylan for a light like he hadn't just been bitten on the neck by another dude in front of a live audience. Now that Dylan had time to give it some thought, that whole deal would probably become a thing with consequences and repercussions tomorrow, but at the moment Dylan was pretty sure they were both too drunk off of Bud Light and triumph to actually care that much.

"Totally," said the faggy vampire kid. "I live up in North Park, how would you guys feel about going up there to play a show?"

Holy shit. Dylan was pretty sure that was pretty important, too, but right now he was just kinda sleepy.

Apparently noticing that her bandmates were at the moment completely useless, Henrietta gave the faggy vampire kid her phone number, much as it obviously pained her to do so.

"Just call tomorrow with the time and place," she said, and then the faggy vampire kid nodded respectfully and scurried off and it didn't occur to Dylan until after he was gone to wonder what the hell a kid like that from North Park was doing at Wendy Testaburger's birthday party.

Somehow they managed to make it outside and load the van back up, but Dylan was kind of fuzzy on the details. Georgie sat up front this time so he and Henrietta could talk about technical garbage, and Dylan was once again stuffed in the backseat, this time with Evan sitting by his side. It wasn't a particularly long drive but Evan fell asleep anyway, head lolling on Dylan's shoulder and sweaty hair all in his face.

Dylan looked down at Evan's neck and saw his own teeth marks, reddish and angry against his pale skin. Cool.


	6. Chapter 6

When Dylan managed to pry his eyelids apart the next day, it was already early afternoon. Unforgiving rays of cold winter sunlight seared through his eyelids and into his brain. He made a noise of abject horror and yanked the covers up over his head, but he'd been through this enough times to know that resistance was futile. Then a machine-gun starting firing somewhere next to his head.

Dylan gave a violent start before he realized it was his cell, its vibrations amplified in force by the wicked hangover headache currently taking up residence between his ears. He freed a hand from his blankets and groped weakly for the phone, almost knocking over a black skull candle and a bottle of Ibuprofen that he made a mental note to dry-swallow several of once he could move again.

He hit 'accept call' without looking to see who it was and waited for whoever was on the other end to start talking, less because he felt like ever speaking to another human again and more to stop the fucking vibrating.

"Hey," said a familiar voice after a few seconds. Dylan winced and quickly removed the phone from his ear, turning the volume down as low as it would go without being completely silent. Henrietta's caller ID picture stared at him from the display; a shot of her hunched over her cigarette holder, blurry because she'd moved halfway through.

"I'm so fucking hungover," Dylan mumbled indistinctly, because it felt like a good idea to get that established right off the bat. There was a noisy exhale on the other end that made Dylan cringe and then Henrietta's voice was boring its way into his skull like so many tiny drills of pain, even at a more manageable volume.

"Come over," she said, somehow managing to sound a lot less fucked than Dylan even though she'd drunk exactly the same amount, maybe even more. Fucking girls. Not that Dylan would know anything about girls. Henrietta was the only one he knew that he could be around for prolonged amounts of time without wanting to blow his brains out. More than usual, anyway. The point was, she sounded less in pain than him and it was annoying. "We've gotta talk about this new gig."

Thinking about the gig made Dylan feel vaguely less miserable. Not happy, of course, because that would be sacrilege. Not _un_happy, maybe. That was probably still pushing it.

"I'll do your hair, too," Henrietta continued. "I don't know if you've noticed, but it's fucking pink."

"Gimme half an hour,"

"'Kay." Henrietta hung up, and everything was blissfully silent.

Dylan hid under his blankets for fifteen more minutes before dragging himself out of bed and over to Henrietta's, not bothering to change or do anything about his tangled hair and fucked-up eyeliner. Henrietta's blond conformist brother Bradley was hanging around in the kitchen when Dylan let himself in the door, and he looked legitimately terrified when they made brief eye contact.

"You look like shit," Georgie greeted him when he opened to door to Henrietta's room. He looked as fresh-faced as ever, not a lipstick smudge in sight. Not for the first time, Dylan wondered how the hell a kid and a girl managed to hold their alcohol better than him. Life was such bullshit.

Dylan chose to ignore Georgie and flopped onto Henrietta's bed, face-first. Or at least he would have, if stupid tall Evan hadn't been in the way.

Evan shifted lazily to make room. Dylan tried to stick his hand in one of his coat pockets for a smoke and failed miserably. Hand-eye coordination had never been a strong point of his, and especially not when he was hungover.

"Cigarette," he said instead. "It's a death-or-death situation."

"Lightweight," Evan snickered, lighting a cigarette out of his pack and putting it in between Dylan's fingers.

Dylan picked his head up and took a drag, directing a glare at Evan that abruptly transformed into an expression of relieved ecstasy as he inhaled. Much better.

"So now that we're all here," Henrietta said pointedly. "The gig."

Puffing away, Dylan arranged himself into a sitting position next to Evan and pulled his knees up to his chest. "We gotta do it," he said immediately. "Even if it's for a faggy vampire kid. He liked us, right? Probably treat us better than fucking Wendy."

"Our first gig for a Britney-wannabe conformist bitch and the second one for a faggy vampire kid," said Evan glumly. "Fastest sellouts ever."

Henrietta just rolled her eyes. "Whatever. How can we sell out when we're not even getting paid yet? And it doesn't matter, anyway, because he already called and I told him we'd do it. Gig's next week."

Evan just sighed, but Dylan knew he didn't actually care that much or he'd totally be throwing a shitfit right now.

"We'll start practicing for it tomorrow," Henrietta decided. "He'll probably want new stuff or something." Dylan was pretty sure his head would explode if he even thought about listening to Georgie play drums for the next twelve hours at least, so that was fine with him.

"How'd I sound?" Evan asked, stretching out next to Dylan on the bed and sipping on a Thermos of coffee he'd probably brought from home.

"Kinda stiff in the beginning," said Georgie from his place on the floor, examining one of Henrietta's candles. "Cool at the end though."

"Yeah," Henrietta agreed. "I like the way you did Vampire Afternoon."

Dylan fought the urge to groan as he remembered playing that song last night. When Evan wasn't looking, he snuck a glance at his neck for the first time that day, vaguely hoping that the whole thing had just been a dream or a bad trip or something. No suck luck. The bite-mark was still there, a jagged semicircle on the side of his throat, just turning purple at the edges.

Henrietta saw where Dylan was looking and almost cracked a smile. "You bit him _hard_," she said, sounding amused. "What was up with that?"

Evan answered before Dylan could, tugging his coat collar up to conceal the mark and shifting almost imperceptibly away from Dylan, who had to fight the instinctive urge to roll after him. "Nothing," he said. "It was nothing, right?"

"Yeah," Dylan agreed after a pause. "Totally."

Henrietta gave them both a look but didn't push it any further, and they spent the next half-hour or so arguing about whether it was more hardcore to play really fast or really slow and exactly how far lyrical influence went before it turned into plagiarism.

Soon Dylan started feeling like he might actually be able to get up and walk around without crumpling to the floor in a ball of pain. He and Henrietta headed to the bathroom to dye his hair while Georgie and Dylan elected to stay behind and try to get some writing done.

After unceremoniously kicking Bradley out of the bathroom, Dylan sat on the toilet lid to wait while Henrietta mixed the dye in a plastic cereal bowl. It looked like soupy blood. They opened a window, but the space was still claustrophobic and gross-smelling, and all that really did was make it freezing too. Dylan had sort of built up a tolerance to the chemical smell over the years, but when combined with the hangover it felt like a distinct possibility that he might puke.

He felt a little better once he was on his knees with his head bent over the sink and Henrietta standing over him, the familiar stance they adopted every month or so when he needed his hair done for as far back as he could remember. Dylan thought he should probably start trying to figure out how to do this for himself soon, but it just seemed like so much work.

"So, like," Henrietta said over the sound of the running faucet, voice too casual to actually be casual. "What's up with you and Evan?"

Dylan tried to pick his head up and make eye contact with her, surprised at the question, but she just made an annoyed sound and forced him back down again. After this caused a near miss that involved his head and the hard porcelain edge of the sink, Dylan decided it would probably be wise to just keep down from then on.

"What? I don't know," he said, distracted. Even though she'd practically just given him a concussion, Henrietta's hands were soothing in his hair. How was it possible to make someone feel soothed when they were freezing cold and bent uncomfortably over a sink with a noseful of chemicals? That was the real question here. "Nothing."

Above him, Henrietta smirked. Dylan couldn't see her, but he bet that was what she was doing. "I'm sure," she said, and Dylan huffed, annoyed. Dye trickled down his temples, and he knew he'd have stains for days that made him look like some kind of head trauma victim or something. Whatever, head trauma was hardcore.

"Shut up," he said. Not because he was defensive or anything. He just didn't feel like talking.

She did, humming Skinny Puppy under her breath as she finished working the dye through his hair and then ordered him into the shower, lighting up another cigarette as she stepped out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Dylan stripped and turned the water practically as hot as it would go, waiting until it warmed up to step under the spray. Henrietta was crazy, obviously. Maybe the fumes had gotten to her, or she was more hungover than she was letting on.

Red turned to pink and then ran down the drain, and Dylan made sure he was all warmed up and his hair was rinsed thoroughly before he stepped out of the shower. He toweled off and climbed back into his clothes, which was actually kind of disgusting because he hadn't bothered to change out of what he'd been wearing last night before he went to sleep, but whatever. Artists weren't supposed to be clean all the time anyway.

Dylan dried his hair roughly. The mirror had completely fogged over, and he wiped a clean patch in order to examine it. It was sticking up every which way and his bangs looked insane but the top was a satisfyingly vivd shade of red, definitely not pink anymore.

He thanked Henrietta's hair voodoo and padded back over to her room without bothering to put his shoes back on, sitting back down on the bed and leaning over into Evan's space to see what he was looking at. He didn't move away like he had before, and Dylan was briefly terrified that Henrietta had said something to him too before he decided even she couldn't be that crazy and just focused on reading the prospective new song, which was called Canadian Bondage. Georgie had written it, apparently. Dylan raised an eyebrow, but no one else was saying anything so he decided not to either.

"You smell like minty fruit," said Evan when he was halfway through reading the song, using his height advantage to blatantly rub his nose in Dylan's hair. "That's so fucking weird."

"Get off me, fag," Dylan said, but he didn't say it in a forceful tone or make any move to pull away. It felt kind of good, or whatever. Evan stopped after a couple seconds, but he was closer than he'd been before, practically on top of Dylan like they were freaking chicks or something.

Dylan shot Henrietta a don't-even-say-anything glare, but she wasn't looking at them, eyes focused studiously on the notebook in front of her. Georgie was as out of it as usual, nodding along to whatever was playing on his iPod and scribbling in a notebook of his own.

One of Evan's arms was slung across Dylan's chest and they were close enough to be sharing body heat. On a bed. And instead of being creeped out by this, Dylan felt relaxed enough to go to sleep. What the fuck that was about he wasn't entirely sure, but he figured it probably wasn't worth it to get all weird if Evan wasn't. He had freshly dyed hair and a cigarette between his teeth and a gig next week, and things were as good as they were going to get.


	7. Chapter 7

Dylan fucking hated North Park. The drive up was invariably long and boring, and it was the only place he'd ever been that was more full of conformist douchebags than South Park.

"I fucking hate North Park," he remarked as he shifted his bass into a more comfortable position on his lap, wanting someone else to share in his misery. But Georgie was asleep, Henrietta was driving, and Evan was too busy nursing a Pabst and going over lyrics to pay attention to anyone.

Dylan reached across the backseat of Henrietta's mom's boyfriend's van, snagging the beer out of Evan's grip and ignoring his noise of protest and halfhearted attempt to get it back. He'd meant to take it in order to stop Evan from trying to get drunk again, but the harder he thought about what they were about to do, the more inviting the prospect started to look. This wasn't going to be like at Wendy's place, when they were only there to serve as background noise for a group of sheeple fighting and humping each other.

No, this faggy North Park-dwelling vampire kid had asked them down to play an actual gig, one that people would come to for the express purpose of seeing them. Granted, it was still going to be in the kid's basement and there was no way more than a dozen people would show up, but it was still scary as hell. Dylan took a swig of the beer and handed it back to Evan, who tossed back the rest of it in a couple gulps. The collar of Evan's coat was turned down so Dylan could see his neck. The bite mark was just starting to fade. Dylan considered trying to make another one tonight before deciding he was being creepy and putting the whole thing out of his mind.

Instead, he rescued the twelve-pack they'd brought along with them from where it had been sliding forward on a collision course with Henrietta's keyboard and took a beer for himself, popping the tab and making sure not to get any of it on his bass.

By the time they pulled up to the address that the faggy vampire kid had given them, everyone except for Henrietta was pretty buzzed, and that was only because her driving was dangerous enough when she was sober. There were a few cars parked on the curb next to the house, and the sight of them made Dylan's head spin and his stomach drop in an entirely unpleasant way. They unloaded their gear from the trunk and headed up the kid's driveway to his front door, ringing the bell and shivering. The weather in North Park wasn't any better than at home.

After a few minutes the faggy vampire kid came to answer the door, looking even more faggy and vampire-like than he had at Wendy's party. "Glad you could make it," he said, ushering them in and stuffing his hands in the pockets of his annoying skull hoodie. "There's drinks in the kitchen, and you can set up whenever."

Evan nodded at him vaguely and they shuffled off in the direction of the kitchen. Once they got there, Dylan was dismayed to discover that there were a couple more faggy vampire kids hanging around, along with two hipsters, a punkish-looking guy with a mohawk, and a black-haired Canadian around Georgie's age who looked vaguely familiar and entirely out of place with the rest of them.

"My friends are really excited to see you guys," the original faggy vampire kid blathered away at Evan's elbow. "I told them all about your sound. Totally New New Wave."

"Right," Dylan said with a barely concealed eye-roll. "Where's the booze?"

The punk-looking kid reached into the fridge and handed Dylan a beer, grinning at him in a stoned kind of way. "I'm Russell," he said. "What do you play?"

"Bass," Dylan said, downing a gulp of the beer.

Russell nodded. "Cool," he said. "I used to play rhythm guitar in this one band but we broke up."

"Weak," Dylan offered. This guy didn't seem quite as terrible as the others, at least. They stood there drinking their beers in silence while one of the hipsters interrogated Henrietta about where she'd gotten her cigarette holder and Georgie sequestered himself in a corner with the Canadian. Dylan wondered absently if they knew each other, but he got distracted when he thought he saw Evan sneaking looks at him and Russell. It happened every couple seconds or so, but he always looked away before Dylan could be sure. Russell watched the whole exchange with a lot more shrewdness than someone who was as obviously high as he was should have been allowed to display, but he didn't say anything about it, instead chatting on aimlessly about the band he used to be in and whether or not anyone had any Cheesy Poofs.

It didn't take long for Henrietta to decide that she had subjected herself to enough posers for one night and loudly announce that they were going downstairs to set up. Dylan nodded at Russell and followed behind her, finishing the last of his beer and chucking the empty can in the general direction of Original Faggy Vampire Kid's garbage. Evan and Georgie came down the stairs a few minutes later. Evan was practically staggering, so he'd managed to get himself drunk after all. Dylan couldn't really judge, because he was pretty much way past buzzed at this point.

Dylan thought vaguely that they probably shouldn't make a habit out of this if they kept landing gigs. Before he could give it any serious consideration, the hipsters and faggy vampire kids and the punk and the Canadian were all descending downstairs in twos and threes, beers and clove cigarettes in hand.

Evan slurred something unintelligible into his mic before the last hipster was even all the way down the stairs and then they were off, starting with a new song they'd written the other day called Fuck Sinatra. The bass line was relatively simple, but Dylan stayed in one spot for most of the song. He tried not to look out at the audience, either, because he was pretty sure he might puke or something if he did and everyone looked like they hated it. He knew it was stupid to think that way, because hipsters were the lowest of the low and faggy vampire kids were even lower than that. Not to mention it was probably better if they didn't like it, because the overwhelming majority of music that vampire kids and hipsters liked was absolutely terrible. But still, no one really wanted to completely bomb, and Dylan was no exception, so he kept his eyes trained firmly on the floor in front of him. He played a couple more songs like that, trapped inside his own head and trying not to display any of his nerves outwardly. The booze had done its job last time, but today it definitely wasn't helping.

He kept largely to his side of the stage, occasionally wandering over to bother Henrietta or Georgie but mostly keeping away from Evan because of how weird he'd acted about the whole neck-biting incident, even though it had somehow ended up with him sniffing Dylan's hair. But in the middle of Heart Philanderer, during one of the instrumental breaks, Evan stalked over to where Dylan was playing and yanked him closer by his shirt collar, slinging an arm over his shoulder and leaning up against him while he played. He was hot and sweaty, no less covered up than last time, and his cross earring was unexpectedly cool against the side of Dylan's throat. Then, as quickly as it happened, Evan was pushing off of him and heading back to where he'd been before, leaving Dylan to stare after him in thinly-veiled shock and practically miss several notes.

Evan was back for the next song, and the song after that, pulling Dylan's hair with abandon and crowding in close to him while he played. At one point he kind of leaned their foreheads together and stared straight at Dylan and sang right in his face for practically an entire minute. Dylan thought he could dimly hear one of the faggy vampire kids cheering them on. He felt weirdly light-headed, and he played an entire song a half-count too fast before he could get himself back under control.

The rest of the show went a lot more smoothly. Somehow Dylan felt more free when he knew that he could go up to Evan whenever he felt like and get up in his space. It felt like no time at all until their set was over. The kids actually cheered for them, which came as something of a surprise since Dylan had been studiously ignoring them for pretty much the entire set. He was pretty sure that wasn't how bands were supposed to behave, but it was pretty much the only way he could handle it.

While they were getting their stuff ready to leave, the four of them were abruptly accosted by the hipsters, the faggy vampire kids, and Russell. The Canadian and Georgie had gone off somewhere. Dylan was really starting to think that they should probably be looking into that one when he was distracted yet again by Russell. He looked slightly less stoned than before, but that wasn't really saying much.

"You guys were cool," he said, leaning against the wall. He had a ring through his bottom lip that glinted in the low light of the basement.

"You don't look like you'd be into our sound," Dylan said doubtfully, digging around in his coat. "Got a light?"

"I'm into a lot of things," said Russell as he pulled a lighter from his back pocket and lit up Dylan's cigarette for him. He waited until Dylan had exhaled a steady stream of smoke to give him an appraising look.

"Hey," he said, and then lapsed into a pensive silence. Dylan watched him for a few seconds to see if he was actually going to say anything else. Just as he was about to give up, Russell continued. "Mind helping me out with something?"

"What is it?" Dylan asked warily. He wasn't particularly fond of helping out strangers, even if they did come to see his band.

Russell pointed to one of the hipsters, an abnormally skinny guy in a gray beanie and a Joy Divison t-shirt. "See that guy?"

"Yeah."

"His name's Ben."

"Yeah."

"He's pretty cool."

"_So_?"

Russell rolled his eyes. "I would like to have sex with him," he explained as if he were talking to a small child.

If it hadn't been against the rules to display excessive emotions outside of sadness or anger, Dylan would have been surprised. Russell didn't look gay at all. But it was cool, Dylan guessed. Being gay was pretty nonconformist. Dylan had been thinking he might be, sort of, but that kind of thing was hard to determine when you'd pretty much never had any sexual experiences. Of any kind. With anyone.

"You gonna help me or not?" Russell asked, examining a loose thread hanging from the hem of his jeans with unwarranted fascination.

"Yeah, whatever," Dylan said absently. He was still kind of stuck on the gay thing. "What should I do?"

"Just walk past him with me into the bathroom. We'll stay in there for a few and then he'll get jealous and realize he should be the one tapping this," said Russell, gesturing expansively down at his Clash t-shirt and scuffed-up Docs.

Dylan shrugged. It seemed harmless enough, and it was Saturday so they didn't have to get back home right away or anything. "Sure. But why me?"

Russell gave an exaggerated shudder. "Those vampire kids freak me out. Plus, your keyboardist is a girl, the Canadian and the drummer are both like five years old, and your singer—" Russell broke off, and smiled crookedly. "I'll let you guys figure that one out. Anyways, you're my only hope."

Dylan would have liked to know what the hell Russell meant about Evan, but he was pretty sure any answer he would be able to squeeze out of this kid would make less than zero sense. "Let's go," he said instead, and then Russell was leaning into his side and steering him in the direction of the bathroom, letting out these stoned kind of pot-giggles all the way that made Dylan laugh too even though nothing was particularly funny.

"Oh, hey Ben," Russell said airily as they passed by the hipster. Dylan tried his best to look the way he imagined you were supposed to look when you were being carted off by a boy to pretend-make out on a bathroom, except he had no fucking clue how you were supposed to look when that happened.

Anyway, the hipster leveled Russell with such a lovelorn expression as they passed by that Dylan was starting to think that maybe this plan was a whole lot less necessary than Russell thought it was. Dylan couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw Evan, too.

They went up to the bathroom and Russell shut the door. "You don't lock it," he explained, "so they'll be able to come bursting in when they fall into a jealous rage and decide they need you."

Dylan just nodded. As if he would ever have occasion to use this information again. "Right," he agreed, and they settled in to wait.


	8. Chapter 8

The bathroom was cramped and hot and had fluorescent lighting, which were three of Dylan's least favorite things. He sat on the edge of the tub and tried to pretend that the shampoo bottle next to him didn't have Edward Cullen's face on it while Russell settled in on the closed toilet lid and examined a liquid eyeliner pen from the counter with a vaguely suspicious expression. Their knees were practically touching, and Russell smelled good in a weird way, like pot and laundry. He was still laughing his stupid baked laugh from time to time.

"Ssh," said Dylan. "What if Ben's outside?"

Russell quieted down at this, surprisingly. "Ben," he said like he was just remembering him, grinning widely and putting down the eyeliner. "I like Ben."

"I figured." He attempted to sound unimpressed, but Dylan didn't know anyone from South Park who was even remotely gay at all. Except for Kenny, who didn't count because everyone knew he'd fuck anything with available holes, and his surly French boyfriend, who didn't count because he was French. And Dylan would rather die a thousand bloody deaths than try talking to either of them about it anyway, because they were still total conformist bastards even if they were also butt-pirates.

And so, all things considered, Dylan decided that even though it was way un-Goth to do anything about his problems except complain, he would try asking Russell. "How did you know?" he asked, trying to keep his voice down. "That you were into Ben or whatever."

Russell stared reminiscently off into the middle distance. "He's totally deep, man. One time we got drunk together and he told me my face was like a universe. My friends think he's a hipster faggot," he broke off, looking troubled, "but what are you gonna do, right?"

Dylan nodded and attempted to ignore his mounting sense of disappointment. Russell's story sounded nothing like his and Evan's situation. Except, he reminded himself, that was ridiculous, because there was no situation. He and Evan were friends. Neck-biting, hair-sniffing friends. And Evan wasn't gay, and neither was he, probably. It was stupid to even be worrying about this. Dylan was almost sure that making out with a guy would be way unpleasant, anyway.

While Dylan suffered through his minor internal breakdown, Russell was infected by a fresh wave of laughter and hid his face in his hands in order to muffle the noise. The bathroom suddenly seemed a lot more cramped, and Dylan realized abruptly that there was a gay guy sitting in very close proximity to him with no obvious facial deformities who was high enough that he probably wouldn't object if Dylan just wanted to make absolutely certain that he was straight, really fast. That was what they were supposed to be doing in here anyway, right?

Russell recovered after a few seconds and took his face out of his hands. Dylan looked at him and wondered how anyone could ever do this without dying of humiliation, much less with someone who was actually sober. After some deliberation, he decided the easiest way would just be to sort of go for it and then deal with any complications as they happened.

Dylan took a deep breath and got up from his seat on the edge of the bathtub, bending over the toilet lid and kissing Russell in a vague approximation of stuff he'd seen on TV. Not that he watched that shit.

Either way, this was nothing like 90210. Dylan's back kind of hurt from bending over and it was seriously getting way too hot in the bathroom and he hadn't exactly been expecting much, but Russell wasn't doing anything at all except just sort of sitting there and letting Dylan kiss him.

After a few seconds of unresponsiveness, however, Russell made a noise that sounded suspiciously like more laughter and slowly rose up from the toilet lid so that Dylan wasn't bent practically in half, not breaking the kiss as he did so.

Dylan had initially intended this to be kind of a get-in-get-out kind of situation, but seconds were ticking into minutes and neither of them made any move to break apart. He'd kind of hoped that he'd be repulsed or something, but Dylan found with a certain measure of trepidation that Russell seemed like a pretty fantastic kisser, even if he didn't have much to compare it to. The thought of kissing a girl didn't sound nearly as satisfactory, even if she dyed her hair black and wrote free-verse poetry.

More time went by, possibly five seconds and possibly an hour, and Dylan finally pulled away because he was starting to get kind of light-headed. For a few moments the two of them just stood there and stared at each other. Dylan's back was pressed uncomfortably against a towel rack, and Russell's mohawk was falling down.

"Sorry," said Dylan after a few seconds, because he had kind of forced himself on the guy, after all.

"No problem, said Russell in a remarkably unperturbed tone,giving him a lopsided smile.

Dylan was just about to move away from the towel rack when the door was flung open, banging his shin on the way and letting in a blast of cool air.

Dylan squinted up at the figure in the doorway, expecting to see a lovesick Ben begging for Russell's hand in holy matrimony or something. Instead, there was Evan, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat as he looked uncertainly into the bathroom at them. Dylan was suddenly hyperaware of the fact that one of Russell's arms was still around his neck and they were standing very close together. He stepped away quickly, feeling like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach, unpleasantly and without warning.

"Uh, we're leaving," said Evan, shifting restlessly from foot to foot and looking anywhere except Dylan and Russell. "Georgie and Henrietta're waiting." Almost before the last words were out of his mouth, he turned and walked away.

When he'd seen Evan's face in the doorway of the bathroom, Dylan had expected him to yell or glare or do something else typical of Evan. He couldn't decide whether it was better or worse that he hadn't.

"Okay," he said stupidly even though Evan was out of earshot, watching as he walked down the stairs. Russell just surveyed Dylan silently, wearing an annoyingly knowing expression.

"I guess I'm leaving," Dylan said, surprised to find that he actually wouldn't mind seeing Russell again sometime. Preferably with less making out. "Thanks for, like, you know. Sorry your plan didn't work."

Russell grinned and followed him out of the bathroom. "It's cool," he said. "I'll figure something out. See you around, yeah?"

And with that he ambled off, presumably off to search for Ben and leaving Dylan to descend back down the stairs into darkness and towards the others.

Before he could get to his bass, one of the faggy vampire kids who'd been watching them came up, smiling through a curtain of red-dyed hair. "You guys are like, _so_ gonna be the next new thing. I was telling my friend Dave—I mean, Nightwolf—about you guys, and he said you sounded way overrated, but I mean, he's way pretentious, so—" She went off into a long-winded analysis of Nightwolf's various opinions that Dylan completely ignored in favor of watching Evan shoot him injured looks from across the room while he turned off Henrietta's keyboard.

Finally, Dylan grabbed his bass from where it had been leaning against a wall and strode over to where Evan was standing, cutting off the faggy vampire kid mid-sentence.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked immediately, ignoring the sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly what was wrong, and why. If Evan wasn't going to say it, neither was he. "You're acting like some Britney Spears-wannabe who just had a text message breakup."

Saying that had probably been the wrong move. Evan's face flushed until it was practically the color of a normal human's, but all he did was shove past Dylan on his way out the door. As he passed, Dylan thought he heard him mutter "dumbshit" under his breath.

He stared after Evan indignantly, about to say something back, but a glare from Henrietta silenced him. She actually had the nerve to give him a look like _he_ was the one who was screwing things up. Which may have possibly been sort of true, but it wasn't like he did it on purpose. If he hadn't already broken enough Goth rules for the night, Dylan could have screamed.

On his way back to Henrietta's mom's boyfriend's van, Dylan stepped over the body of a passed-out hipster and waved vaguely at some more faggy vampire kids who'd offered to help them carry their stuff back upstairs, hardly feeling the cold as he stepped out the front door and into the snowy night. He could just barely make out Evan through the window of the van, sitting in the front seat with his arms folded, waiting for everyone else. Dylan hurried back inside to get his amp, definitely not interested in being alone with Evan for longer than he had to be at the moment.

As he approached the stairs to the basement, he could hear the strains of yet another argument happening below. Wondering what the hell it could be this time, Dylan heaved a sigh and walked down the stairs.

Once he was back in the basement, he saw Georgie standing next to his still-intact drum set, looking vaguely defiant and clutching the hand of that black-haired Canadian who'd been hanging around before.

"I don't see why this is a big deal," he was saying. From what Dylan could tell, the Canadian looked largely unconcerned with everything that was going on.

"He's a conformist!" Henrietta said agitatedly. "A Canadian Nazi bastard, and you're going out with him! Not to mention you didn't even bother to tell any of us about this."

"I didn't tell you because I knew you'd act like this," said Georgie, in a tone of voice like he was talking to a small child. Which was pretty ironic, considering the fact that she had a good nine inches on him, height-wise. "And if Ike's such a Canadian Nazi Bastard then I guess you don't want me in the band anymore, because he's the one who taught me drums."

Henrietta looked like she didn't quite know how to deal with this information.

"Yeah," said Georgie. "So if you're done freaking out about that, I'm gonna hitch a ride with Ike and let you deal with this whole Dylan and Evan fiasco."

"Dude," one of the faggy vampire kids who'd offered to help with their stuff whispered to another one. "This band is super gay. D'you think they'll play my birthday party?"

—- —- —-

Henrietta played Skinny Puppy on full volume all the way back home, but the silence in between songs was deafening. Dylan had the entire backseat to himself since Georgie was gone and he'd taken his drums with him, but for some reason he still found it difficult not to sneak glances up to the front seat where Evan was sitting. Whenever he looked over, however, Evan was always staring resolutely ahead at the road in front of them.

Before that night Dylan never thought he'd actually be happy to see his house, but when Henrietta dropped him off out front he could have kissed the ground. That had been pretty much one of the most awkward car rides of his entire existence. He hurried up the stairs to his room and flopped down on the bed without bothering to shower or even change out of his clothes, absently watching the digital numbers on his alarm clock march closer to the next day. He put his phone on the bedside table next to it, but no one called.


	9. Chapter 9

**an: the end is nigh! one chapter left after this one. there's certainly been enough buildup to this shit. also since i'm apparently never happy unless i'm doing something blasphemous, is there anything in particular you'd like to see from me in the future? your feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated. **

* * *

After the whole ordeal on Saturday, things were surprisingly normal. Much to Henrietta's dismay, a lot of people at the show liked the Manic Episodes, and a couple of the faggy vampire kids had asked if they were available to play parties, basement shows, whatever. Henrietta texted Dylan this news at some indeterminate point on Sunday afternoon, just when he was starting to think about waking up.

She wanted to practice later on that evening, because she'd chosen the least heinous-looking faggy vampire kid and agreed to play at his house in two weeks. _can't_, Dylan texted back. Knowing that wouldn't be enough to deter her, he added, _bleeding from the ears_. The hangover definitely felt that way, but mostly Dylan just didn't feel up to meeting with the others and having to deal with Evan alternately glaring and shooting him wounded looks for no reason at all, and Dylan feeling guilty for the same. He'd spent most of the night feeling bad about whatever the hell had happened, and Evan wasn't even there.

Not to mention the fact that Georgie had apparently managed to scavenge himself some sort of Canadian boyfriend, which would of course mean that Henrietta would still be beside herself and Georgie would be even more withdrawn than usual. They probably wouldn't get much practicing done at all, come to think of it.

Dylan sat up in bed, shaking his head in mild disgust. If someone told him six months ago that someday he would expressly avoid hanging out with his friends because he didn't want to deal with their drama, of all things, he would have thought they were insane.

He stayed in bed as afternoon faded into evening, figuring he'd just make a day of chain-smoking and staring at the ceiling. Lazy, half-formed thoughts chased themselves through his head, mostly annoying crap about needing more nail polish or fragments of poems, but the occasional thought about Evan snuck in from time to time.

For the most part, Dylan just tried to block him out. He didn't want to think about Evan, because it was confusing and it made him feel angry and also kind of sore, but not in a physical way. Like his emotions just had to run a mile, or something. That probably would have made for some pretty good lyrics, but in the process of stubbing out one cigarette and lighting another, he forgot about it.

As the clock struck ten P.M., Dylan found himself wondering about Georgie and his Canadian boyfriend. It was kind of shocking, sure, but more because Dylan found it difficult to imagine anyone besides the three of them voluntarily spending time with Georgie. Not that he wasn't cool for a freshman, but he also wasn't particularly forthcoming with pleasantries. Or conversation of any kind.

What did Canadians like to talk about, anyway? Dylan almost texted Georgie to ask, but then he remembered his ears were supposed to be bleeding.

Not long after that, Dylan fell asleep. He woke the next morning with another text from Henrietta, and he already knew better than to try begging off of practice twice in a row when they had a show coming up.

A couple hours later he was crunching through the snow that led up to her driveway, bass in tow. He knocked on the garage and it opened up enough for him to duck underneath it and head to his usual corner of the garage, tuning his bass and pointedly not looking at anyone. Especially not Evan.

Presumably they'd gotten all of the drama out of their system yesterday without Dylan, because nothing too Springer happened at practice. They started working on a Zola Jesus cover that was only half bad, and everyone was more or less polite to each other. The next two weeks passed without incident, and all too soon they were packing up Henrietta's mom's boyfriend's van for yet another trip to a faggy vampire kid's house. The only upside was that this one actually lived in South Park, so their lives wouldn't be at the mercy of Henrietta's dubious driving skills for as long as last time.

It was more crowded than the last faggy vampire kid's house had been, that was for sure. Fifteen people there, at least. Russell was hanging out in the living room while Ben the hipster stalked him unsubtly from a few feet away. Dylan, surprised to see them, started to make his way across the room, but he was intercepted by Evan, carrying a beer and saying loudly that they should probably start setting up, even though it was still way early.

Dylan had been trying not to step on his toes lately, but that didn't stop him from shooting a glare at Evan's back as he retreated to go ruin someone else's good time. Not that it was that good of a time, really, when he was sick with nerves and kept thinking that he saw people he knew wandering around the faggy vampire kid's house. In fact, over there in the corner, that kind of looked like—

"Hey," said Georgie, coming up next to Dylan with a red plastic cup in his hands and knocking into his shoulder. "Is that Stan Marsh?"

"Oh god," Dylan said, heart sinking. "You see him too?"

Georgie just nodded and handed Dylan the cup. "Evan'll freak out," he commented airily, like it didn't matter to him one way or the other, and went off with his Canadian boyfriend again because apparently he was following them around at their shows now too.

Dylan sighed and wished that he too had the luxury of not caring. He was just thinking about going back to see Russell and, by extension, Ben, when Evan came stalking past with a grim expression on his face that could only mean he'd seen the same thing Dylan and Georgie had.

"Let's go," he said tersely.

Dylan looked down sadly at the half-full cup. He wasn't even buzzed yet, but he had the good sense not to say anything about it when Evan was acting like this. Still, it would be his first show sober, and that in and of itself was pretty horrifying.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he intoned to Henrietta darkly as she set up her keyboards and he pretended to tune his bass.

Henrietta glanced over at Evan. "What's Stan even doing here, anyway?"

Dylan shrugged.

A few minutes later, it was time for them to play. The first few songs went by without incident. Everyone more or less kept to themselves, and Dylan didn't make any serious mistakes despite the fact that it was a lot more difficult to handle the sight of a bunch of people watching your every move without the haze of inebriation making them insignificant.

But then, halfway through Heart Philanderer, Dylan saw Evan see Stan, and that was pretty much it for that. At first he looked horrified and almost stumbled over the words. Then his eyes narrowed like he was angry, and finally, what Dylan dreaded most; the barest flicker of that stupid hurt expression that was been on his face pretty much nonstop for a whole month after Stan left their group with that one weird-ass blond kid when they were eight, after insulting them thoroughly.

Henrietta never liked him very much anyway, Dylan was kind of shocked but got over it eventually, and Georgie, who cared less about what other people thought of him than he did for the Superbowl, promptly forgot the whole thing. Evan, of course, was emotionally traumatized.

Dylan played his bass with a little more vigor than he would have usually. Fucking _eight_. Why did Evan remember that shit? The better to wallow around in the blackness of his own soul or something, Dylan guessed, but still. There had to be a line somewhere.

And yet, why was he so angry about it? In the space of a few seconds, Dylan had gone from just trying to make it through the show to mad enough to stalk over to Evan and punch him in the face onstage. The more he thought about it, the more the anger welled up inside him. Evan was such an _ass_, acting all weird for no reason just because Dylan was hanging around in a bathroom with some dude for a while, and then completely ignoring him for two weeks. Who did he think he was, anyway?

By the time his brain next caught up with him, Dylan was halfway across the stage and still playing. Half his mind was focused on getting the notes right and the other half was full to the brim with a vague, inarticulate sort of rage.

For a second Dylan considered getting himself under control like a superior Goth would have done and retreating safely away from Evan.

Before that second was halfway over, Dylan was closing the distance between Evan and himself. He wasn't even entirely sure what he was going to do until he was mere millimeters away from the side of Evan's face, and Evan's voice was loud in his ears, and Evan's eyes were still, infuriatingly, fixed on Stan.

Instead of hitting him or kicking him in the balls or something else equally painful, he just kind of breathed harshly in Evan's ear until he stopped singing for Georgie's drum solo. He knew how awkward it probably looked, and for the second time considered backing out. Then, after a moment of wavering in furious indecision, Dylan leaned in and kissed him.

A few girls shrieked. In the front row, Georgie's oblivious Canadian boyfriend yelled, "Yeah, Georgie!"

But nothing apocalyptic happened. The faggy vampire kid's basement didn't lapse into a terrible silence or a cacophony of booing, no one left, and everyone was watching with more or less the same amount of enthusiasm they'd had for the rest of the show. Not that Dylan would've really noticed if any of the above happened.

Without any consent from his brain that he could remember giving, one of his arms had come up to grip the side of Evan's face. His bass was digging into both of their stomachs in a highly uncomfortable way, and they were both sweating, and Dylan's mouth was pressed to Evan's with an intensity he'd never afforded anything in his life. It was messy, considerably lacking in finesse, and also the coolest thing ever.

Dylan knew even as he was thinking it that it was the kind of lame Nazi saying that conformist teenage girls wrote in their diaries after they had sex with their first boyfriends at the age of twelve, but it really did feel like the kiss lasted forever and for no time at all. He actually felt a little bit weak in the knees. What the fuck was the world coming to?

An eternity or a few seconds later, Evan pushed Dylan away and returned to his mic so that he wouldn't miss his cue to start singing again. Dylan was pleased to note that there was a definite red flush creeping up the back of his usually dead-white neck, and he had to gasp for air like a drowning man before he was able to start singing again.

Triumphant that his mission, whatever it was, had been successful, and trying not to notice the rapid-fire beating of his own heart, Dylan retreated to his corner of the floor. He pointedly ignored the alternately smug and gleeful faces that Henrietta was making at him over her keyboard, or the long-suffering way that Georgie rolled his eyes, the Canadian-dating hypocrite.

The rest of the show passed with little incident, and Dylan couldn't help but notice that Evan was too busy shooting distracted little glances at Dylan to even notice when Stan left without saying anything.

The minute Georgie and Henrietta went upstairs to move their stuff back up to the van, however, Evan rounded on him.

"What was that?"

Dylan shrugged sullenly, unplugging his amp. Even still riding the high, he knew this would have to happen at some point. There was no use playing dumb, but he honestly had no idea why he'd done it. "I was mad," he finally said, because that was more or less true.

Evan pinched the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache and leveled Dylan with a truly formidable glare. "You hypocrite bastard," he said, with a lot more feeling than he usually displayed.

Dylan scowled. "What? How am I a hypocrite? You're a hypocrite."

Evan folded his arms like it should all be very obvious. "You got all stupid and pissy when I was jealous of that one guy or whatever," he said, rushing through the words with his eyes averted but his head held up defiantly. "And then when you finally get a clue you're all over me without a fucking how-do-you-do."

Dylan blinked. That was a lot of information to process at once. "Wait," he said slowly, deciding to focus on one thing at a time. "You were jealous?"

Evan folded his arms tighter, but he was looking right at Dylan's face when he said, "Yeah, I guess."

Dylan bit his bottom lip hard and tried to think of something to say that wasn't too conformist, or idiotic, or wildly inappropriate. "Me, too," he settled on. "Of Stan. But I guess you probably know that by now."

"Probably," said Evan, and he was almost halfway smirking. "Anyway," he continued. "How fucking creepy is Georgie's Canadian boyfriend? I saw him the other day and he was wearing pale blue."

"What the hell kind of color is that?" Dylan asked, gathering up the rest of his stuff. They set off up the stairs for Henrietta's mom's boyfriend's van, and he tried not to look too happy on the outside.


	10. Chapter 10

last part! sorry it took so ridiculously long to get out and thanks to everyone who reviewed and so forth.

* * *

Georgie greeted them at the top of the stairs, Canadian boyfriend by his side. "'M hitching a ride with Ike," he announced, words slurring together. His black lipstick was faded in places and smudged halfway up one cheek. Ike had an arm slung around his shoulders, and was probably the primary reason that he hadn't yet toppled to the floor.

Dylan raised an eyebrow. Georgie had clearly managed to best Henrietta in her crusade against preteen drunkenness, and leaving him alone and inebriated with some Canadian stranger didn't seem like the best course of action. Even if the stranger did look a lot more sober than pretty much everyone else involved. Before he could voice his concerns, however, Evan interjected. "How exactly do you plan to hitch a ride with him? You guys are both like, five."

"My brother drove me," said Ike. "Stan came too, and neither of them drank. It's fine."

That explained Stan's presence, at least. Dylan waited for the usual vague feelings of pissed-offness that cropped up whenever his name was mentioned, but they didn't come.

Evan just shrugged and handed over a drumstick that Georgie had apparently managed to lose track of at some point. "Have fun riding with the conformists."

Outside, Henrietta idled at the curb, smoking a cigarette and waiting for them. "Georgie fucked off," Dylan told her through the window before pulling the door open and climbing into the relative warmth of the van. Evan came next, wedging himself in next to Dylan even though there was enough space without Georgie there for him to take a different seat. He smelled like stale cigarette smoke and melted snow, and Dylan was pressed warmly against the side of his slightly damp coat for the whole ride back to South Park.

The whole situation really just made Dylan want to make out some more, but Henrietta kept shooting knowing glances at them when she should have been keeping her eyes on the road, which kind of put a damper on things. Even so, they managed to make it back unscathed to the familiar streets of South Park.

Henrietta pulled up in front of Dylan's house, and he detached himself from Evan with as much dignity as he could manage before exiting the van and giving them both a sardonic wave.

"See you around, loverboy," Henrietta called out the window, and then sped away too quickly for him to flip her off. Instead he just trudged up the driveway, bass in hand. It was a couple hours past midnight at least and the house was dark when he got in, silent except for intermittent snores from the direction of his parents' bedroom. Confident that there was no one around to see, Dylan allowed himself to grin as much as he wanted as he climbed up the stairs to his room.

—- —- —

The next day Dylan managed to pry his eyelids open at a healthy 1:30 PM, sans hangover for once. He staggered out of bed and into a shower, going over and over the events of last night in his head as he washed off old makeup and that sleazy kind of feeling that always came with sweating in someone's basement for two hours.

He was just toweling off when his phone started ringing on the bedside table, Henrietta's blurry caller ID picture staring up at him. He hit the accept button and was greeted with silence, followed by a few bumping noises and then the unmistakable sounds of Georgie sulking violently. This, of course, could only mean that a movie day was happening.

Finally, Evan's voice came on the line, choppy at first and then clearer. "We're at Henrietta's. Come over."

"What's—"

"Just come." Before Evan hung up, Dylan heard Henrietta's voice in the background, tinny and small. "Is that Dylan? Make him tell Georgie—"

The line went dead. Rolling his eyes at his friends' general existence, Dylan grabbed a coat and headed out.

A few minutes later he was wrestling open the front door of Henrietta's house, anxious to get out of the cold. Making a point not to wipe the mud off his feet because he knew it was one of the few things that actually pissed off Henrietta's mom, he trudged into the living room.

Georgie and Henrietta were glaring at one another over three DVDs, which Dylan knew from experience would be A Clockwork Orange, The Craft, and Heathers. Ike and Evan were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, eyeing each other warily. When Dylan saw Ike, he did a double-take. Movie days were sacred. Stan never even got to come to one.

In retrospect that was probably because he didn't stick around long enough for one to actually happen. Whatever. The point was, Georgie's Canadian boyfriend definitely did not belong there. He didn't look like he was having a particularly good time, either, probably because Georgie was totally ignoring him in favor of looking like he was going to breathe fire at Henrietta at any moment. Also he had on a pale blue sweater. Seriously, what the fuck. Heaving a sigh, Dylan walked all the way into the room and plopped down on the couch between him and Evan.

On the way to Henrietta's house, Dylan had come to the conclusion that hanging around Evan would probably be kind of awkward for a while what with everything that happened last night, but instead of jumping to his feet and making some kind of melodramatic declaration, Evan just took a short break from side-eyeing Ike to smirk a welcome at Dylan.

Ike looked over at him with something akin to hope, but Dylan just joined forces with Evan on the side-eyeing front so that Ike was under multiple full-frontal side-eye assault. Instead of looking unnerved, or going to sit somewhere else, or simply fleeing for his life through the back door, however, Ike rolled his eyes so hard he looked in danger of pulling a muscle.

"Jesus Christ," he said, folding his arms and glaring back at them. "And I thought my brother's friends were weird. I don't know what kind of Kings of Darkness bullshit you're trying to pull, but it isn't working. And why would you even think it would? I mean, seriously." And here he waved a hand illustratively at Georgie.

Dylan and Evan halted their onslaught for a few seconds to silently confer. This consisted mostly of Dylan wondering why he hadn't thought of that sooner and then shrugging at Evan, who shrugged back.

"Okay. But that is one fucked-up sweater. I'm Dylan, he's Evan, and that's Henrietta."

"It's my favorite," said Ike, but he looked marginally less pissed-off. Not that a kid who was even younger than Georgie and wearing a freaking pale blue sweater looked that terrifying when they were pissed. Still, Dylan was pretty sure he heard somewhere that the kid was some supergenuis who'd skipped three grades and was probably in the process of building some giant laser to kill them all, or something. Smart people were assholes, anyway.

"And I know," Ike continued. "He talks about you guys a lot, actually."

Dylan and Evan glanced at each other again, taken aback. Georgie didn't exactly seem the type. Dylan considered saying something about it, decided that would be way too awkward for everyone involved, and let it go.

For the next few minutes the three of them sat there next to each other in increasingly awkward silence, while Georgie rambled about the overwhelming superiority of A Clockwork Orange to all other movies and Henrietta just sat there shaking her head and repeating "Eraserhead. Eraserhead. Eraserhead." in a monotone.

Finally, Dylan felt Evan shifting around next to him on the couch and sighing. It was probably about time for his one line in the whole charade. "You guys," he deadpanned. "Why don't we just watch Heathers."

Georgie and Henrietta both glanced down at the DVD with feigned expressions of interest, as if this exact thing hadn't happened every month or so for God-knew how many years. Ike, a new spectator, regarded the whole thing with the detached fascination of someone watching a special on Animal Planet.

"Why do you even have that movie," Georgie snickered just like he always did, and Henrietta snapped, "It's Bradley's," just like she always did. The familiarity was comforting, in a weird way.

"I guess we could watch it," Henrietta sighed long-sufferingly. Georgie gave his reluctant agreement and went to sit on the couch next to Ike, who gave him a look that conveyed both incredulity and a resigned sort of fondness. Totally gay.

In fact, It was almost kind of precious. Of course, the minute Dylan thought that was when he knew that he would have to just pretend that the two of them weren't there for the rest of the day, because the adjective 'precious,' even when used only in the internal monologue, was about as un-Goth as you could get without turning into Sarah Palin.

Not to mention the fact that it was making him want to look over and see how Evan was reacting to the whole thing, which would undoubtedly lead to his brain connecting Evan with dating, and then he wouldn't be able to concentrate on appreciating the cinematic masterpiece that was Heathers for approximately the 700th time. And that wouldn't be good for anyone.

Henrietta put in the DVD and sat down on Evan's other side, and the five of them watched Heathers. Dylan tried to see how long he could last predicting the exact dialogue line-for-line in his head(a disturbingly long time), and when he reached over halfway through the movie to bum some lukewarm coffee from Henrietta, he noticed her mouthing the words along with Winona Ryder.

After the movie was over and Dylan, Evan, and Henrietta had made fun of Ike walking Georgie home for a sufficient amount of time, they decided to head back as well. Henrietta, who had the unfair advantage of already being in her house, waved lazily at the two of them before lighting a cigarette and starting to channel-surf.

"So, that kid was pretty was weird," Dylan opened with as he and Evan stepped out of the warmth of Henrietta's house together and into the freezing cold.

Evan just shrugged, hunching his shoulders against the wind as Dylan flicked his hair out of his eyes in one practiced motion. "Georgie's pretty weird. They'll do fine."

Dylan just nodded, and they walked in silence until they reached the street that Evan would have to turn on to get back to his house. Dylan slowed down instinctually, ready to exchange sarcastic goodbyes and then go home to fall back asleep or practice bass or something. However, Evan didn't appear to have that in mind this time, instead continuing to crunch forward through the snow. Dylan frowned.

"Isn't this your stop?"

Evan glanced back at Dylan, his nose red with cold. "Thought I'd walk you home."

Dylan's face suddenly felt warm, in spite of how ridiculously cold it was outside. He shoved his hands inside the pockets of his black coat and walked faster, to catch up.

**THE END**


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